


A Map of the Night Sky

by agelade



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mind Control, Recovery, framework fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-10-23 17:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10724307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agelade/pseuds/agelade
Summary: A Framework Story: Jemma and Daisy's rescue goes as smoothly as can be expected, and most of the hostages wake up in the real world. But Jemma and Daisy aren't there to stop Aida from retaliating against the newly awakened, weak agents. Someone's got to stay behind in the framework to distract her.





	1. Chapter 1

**A Map of the Night Sky**

_An Agents of Shield Framework Story_

 

“Jemma?”

She thinks it might be the most beautiful and heartbreaking sound in the world, Fitz saying her name like that. Quiet, revelatory, discovering something long thought lost to him. She shouldn’t have so many memories of this quiet _Jemma_ as she does, she shouldn’t have so many memories of him looking at her like she’s a ghost, or like he is.

But she does, and he has them too. She watches all of them catch up to him at once; until now he’s been drawn along in their wake, drawn along at gunpoint for a while as well, but now. _Now_ , he remembers. What’s been done to him. What he’s done.

The smoke is thick and black around them, the building is soon to cave in she thinks. She and he are on their bellies in a mostly collapsed hallway, and he’s on the wrong side of a gap in the rubble, adequately Fitz-sized for now, but threatening to cut them off completely with every shudder of the building’s foundation.

The others have made it through, made it to the backdoor, even now they’re pulling away the debris that will gain them access to the exit point. Less than an hour ago, Fitz had been bullied into programming it for them, at gunpoint, casually revolted by their very presence. But since then, he’s been shot at by Aida’s men, he’s been hunted, and the dark way he speaks about “Ophelia” makes Jemma think that possibly, Fitz doesn’t trust her all that much either. He’s been coming along willingly since they got into this building, he’s interested in the other side, and he hasn’t stopped staring at Jemma.

But now they’re lying within fingertip’s reach of one another, on opposite sides of what will lead them to escape, and tears are streaming down his face, and he can _see_ her.

“Jemma--” he chokes.

“Fitz, come on. You’ve got to grab my hand and come on, come with me now, come back to me now, do you hear me?”

Fitz reaches for her out of instinct, perhaps, but pauses just short of touching her hand. There are shouts in the distance: Mack, Coulson, May. Fitz’ gaze shifts minutely to her left and she turns to see her team members helping each other through the wreckage toward the his hasty back door. Daisy’s on her way back for Fitz and Jemma, and suddenly she hears a gasp and when she turns back, Fitz has caught his hand away from her, is holding it to his chest, is shaking his head, is mouthing _no_.

“Fitz! Hurry!”

“I can’t,” he says, softly in spite of the creaking rebar and crackling furnace flame. He looks up at her. “This is my--” He starts again, pleading. “I’ve _done_ this, I can’t go back. After what I’ve--”

“What? No, Fitz--!”

But he’s nodding, already pulling back and looking behind him, to go back the way they came, to go back to _her_.

“Fitz, stop, please--”

He turns back to her, earnest, so earnest like knowing everything about eighteen species of monkey and having a plan to save everyone and believing in a friend when all evidence said not to and _loving her_ earnest, and he says, “She’ll be waiting for the others when they wake up. I’ll distract her. You just _get there_ and save them and then you destroy this thing. Do you hear me, Jemma? You destroy this thing.”

What she hears though he doesn’t say: _you leave me here and destroy this thing_.

“What? I can’t, that’s ridiculous, there’s no way--”

“Jemma,” Daisy says from her side. “We have to go.”

“Fitz--!”

“I have to do this. We’re all drugged to the gills out there, and alone. You know she’ll kill them the moment they wake up unless she’s distracted. Let me do this.”

Daisy puts her hand on Jemma’s, a look that says _now or never_ which she doesn’t need, because above them the building seems to sway.

“Promise me,” she says desperately. “Promise me that if I leave you here, you’ll stay alive somehow. Just stay alive. I couldn’t live if you didn’t.”

Fitz blinks tears down his cheeks at the words, familiar now through the haze of the last twenty-nine years he’s lived without her, or three weeks, or a lifetime either way. He smiles, just a little. “Fine, okay.”

“Say it. Say you promise--”

“Jemma, we have to go--”

“Say it!”

“I promise!” Fitz says. “Just go, now, before we’re all killed!”

“Thank you!” Daisy says in exasperation, and drags Jemma away through the smouldering choke, through the mangled skeletal system of this building that was once an apartment complex, something Aida could crush with a thought if her programming had allowed it.

And almost too soon, they’re back in the world, Jemma gasping awake seconds after Daisy, and they’re all waking up in Aida’s bunker too, at least an hour away, and suddenly Fitz’ plan to keep her busy is the only thing they can depend on as they race for their coordinates.

“I won’t let them destroy the framework,” Daisy says, sitting next to her and fastening the straps on her thigh holster.

“Good.”

“Not until Fitz is out.”

Jemma smooths the last of her own straps down, looks Daisy in the eye. “That’s the plan.”

* * *

 

They’re out, they’re all out except for Fitz and Radcliffe, who’s dead already. Aida is sitting at a makeshift table in the corner, in front of a cup of cold tea, watching.

“She’s been just... sitting there. The whole time.” Coulson flexes his robot hand from where he sits on the ground next to May’s unconscious body.  It’s taken Jemma and Daisy two hours to get to the base, and they’re all still on the ground, all still weak, and if she’d waked up from this trance, Aida could have overpowered any of them.

Jemma regards the unblinking android with distrust, then turns toward Fitz, strapped in, peaceful, still. “Fitz is keeping her busy in the framework. He was worried she’d come after you all when you woke up.”

She goes to him, drinking him in. The real him. His close cropped curls have grown just a little, his beard quite a bit, though fair as he is, it doesn’t much matter. She reaches her hand up to touch him, stops just short.

Across the room, Mack’s groaning to his feet, he’s reaching for a piece of discarded piping, he’s approaching the root server--

“Wait,” Daisy says, and Jemma turns, stricken.

“This thing has got to go,” Mack says, and hefts the pipe.

“No, please!” Jemma says. Her voice is raw, her head is aching, her leg throbs with every motion, and she’s already murdered Fitz, his blood on her hands, his voice in her ears begging her to see him, to spare him, before his red hands close around her throat, and now she is beyond desperate. “Fitz is still in there, I have to go back for him.”

Mack sighs, big with his shoulders and he spares a glance at Fitz. “I heard what he said back there. Turbo made his choice, Simmons. We need to respect that and do what he’s giving us the chance to do.”

“You don’t understand--” she begins, and the overwhelming sense that everything has been for naught wells up in her throat. She is very aware of the gun on her hip.

But Daisy intervenes. “We don’t leave people behind, Mack. I know you’re upset -- about the framework, about Hope--”

“Don’t you even say her name to me--”

“And I know how much you want this thing gone, believe me. But leaving Fitz there to die is not an option.”

“Mack, put the pipe down,” Coulson says. He’s still staring at May, Jemma can guess at what he’s thinking, wondering what to say to her when, or if, she wakes up.

Mack’s face when he sees May on the ground, another reminder of how the framework has hurt people he cares about -- he squeezes his grip on the pipe.

Jemma steps forward. “Please, Mack. Please if you’re his friend, please--”

“I _am_ his friend and I’m telling you Turbo wouldn’t want us to waste this opportunity, his sacrifice. This is why he stayed--”

“He stayed because of you!” Jemma screams. “He stayed because of all of you. To save you! And because after _everything_ that has happened... he doesn’t think he can be forgiven. He doesn’t think he has a right to come home and face you. But if you will only wait, please, and let me go back and talk to him. Let me bring him home, _please_ , and then, if you can’t find it in yourself to be in the same room with him, we’ll leave Shield, we’ll go away and you’ll never have to talk to either of us again, _please_ \--”

And she doesn’t say _he’s saved all of your lives several times over_ or _perhaps if you’d ever felt what it’s like to have someone cross the universe for you, you’d understand_ or _if you dare even frown in his direction I’ll have you by the tongue--_

But before she can form a polite variation that can get across the sentiment that Fitz does very much deserve and need rescuing, the wild chirp of his heart monitor alerts them that something is at that very moment going wrong. Jemma races to his side, to try to stabilize him, but it’s obvious something has happened to him on the other side and all she can do is keep his pulse rate, ox, and bp in the green.

Coulson stands then, maybe drawing strength from emergency, maybe just finally having had enough of passively letting his agents die. “Go,” he says to Jemma, and turns to Mack. “Mack, put the pipe down. Daisy’s right, we don’t leave a man behind.”

Mack shakes his head, like he knows better than she does what Fitz would want, like he knows Fitz’ mind, just like he once told Fitz that he hoped Fitz figured out the morals surrounding his work on the framework and on Aida, like the answer was obvious to Mack and Mack alone, and in this moment Jemma wants to wipe that disdainful look right off his face. He raises the pipe minutely; she rests her palm on the grip of the gun strapped to her hip.

But a moment later, he drops the pipe to the ground, shoulders slumped. Mack’s hurting too, and he is Fitz’ friend too, and Mack was there when Jemma wasn’t, so she owes him and just this once, she’ll let him live through this threat on Fitz’ life. She nods to Daisy and steps up into the contraption that will send her hurtling through electrons and back into Fitz’ world.

Her body, she hopes, has been recovered by Shield, now that Ward knows she’s a Shield agent. When she pops back in, she hopes it will be among friends, she hopes Fitz is okay, she hopes it isn’t too late, and that whatever’s happening to him won’t kill him before she can save him.

Daisy straps her in.

“I’m coming for you, Fitz.”

* * *

 

Shield hasn’t burned her body yet when she wakes up in it again. She shocks the poor lab tech who’s just tidying the place up. But by now the tiny resistance effort is familiar with her inability to stay dead, and when she croaks “Ward, now!” the tech goes scurrying off and she’s allowed to get herself back to life alone.

“I thought you were pulling the plug on all of this,” Ward says, crossing his arms. He’s the head of Shield now, for lack of anyone else better suited.

“Not just yet,” she says.

“Let me guess, you left someone behind.” He sounds bitter. But he can’t have hoped they’d bring him out, can he?

Jemma rolls her eyes. “Yes, in fact.”

“The Doctor.”

“ _Fitz_ , yes.”

“He’s been on the news. Some new initiative.”

Jemma’s blood runs cold. Fitz had remembered himself by the time they were about to escape. If it’s possible he’s reverted, that without her around, he’s fallen back into his programmed personality and lost memories, this will be so much harder. “What new initiative?”

“They’re going into space travel, if you can believe that. And here I thought they had their hands full with all the oppression and torture and murder.”

“Space travel?” Jemma frowns. It’s likely not really space travel -- Aida would have created anything they’d discover, and Fitz has of course had his fill of jumping across universes. Although of course if he’s not Fitz anymore, he doesn’t remember that whole little ordeal. Ugh. “Show me.”

Ward shows her a news clip of a press event. Fitz stands next to Aida, dressed sharply, as usual, eyes cold and hard. What he describes in his quiet, deceptively small voice is a plan to explore new worlds, to bring mankind to greater heights. The “other world” he’d talked about before they escaped, the one Aida had convinced him of, the one that was planning to invade -- Fitz was describing a pre-emptive strike.

But as his quiet announcement comes to an end and he’s guided off-stage, the newscaster begins to talk about the recent disappearance and reappearance of Leopold Fitz. A reported injury that has kept the Doctor from his duties for a short period of time, a reference to the Doctor’s father, speaking out against the terrorists who harmed his heroic son, and when she runs it back, she sees that Fitz is stiff, his speech is rehearsed in a way the Doctor’s never had been. And he’s ushered off before he can answer questions, and Jemma frowns. The injury that spiked his heart monitor, perhaps?

“I have to get to him,” she says.

“We’ve actually been working on that,” Ward says.

* * *

 

It’s a great plan, if what you’re trying to do is _kill_ the Doctor.

“We can’t do this,” she says.

“He’s a monster.”

“He’s not. He’s a hostage.” Back home, her friends are cleaning up the base, taking it back from whatever LMDs are left after the explosion in the hangar, and she’s got a week before Daisy and Elena unplug her and take her back home whether she gets Fitz back or not.

“Yeah,” Ward says. “Sure. I remember.” He doesn’t sound like he believes her.

But she thinks this plan will work, at least far enough to get her close to him, and she thinks she can convince Ward to kidnap Fitz rather than kill him. It seems like a very near thing; he hasn’t given her a guarantee on Fitz’ life even as they’re speeding their way toward their objective.

She can’t bring herself to care about the mission details. These people are bits and bytes; she can’t care about their safety, she can’t make herself chime in on the safest way into the building, she wants to take all the risks except for the ones that make Fitz a target, or herself, of course.

He’s on a tour of a new acquisition, some out of the way research building recovered from the fall of Shield that Aida thinks they can repurpose for work on the new space project. Jemma and Ward and Davis wait and watch from cover in a dark and abandoned lab. Confirmation that the Hydra escort team has been taken out comes over their comms. The plan so far has gone as expected, and now it’s just Fitz and his two minders, and their two security goons.

Ordinarily, she thinks, Fitz would have come alone, but Aida is never far from him now, and on his other side, a man she only half-recognizes from one lonely picture she saw in a photo book at Fitz’ mum’s on holiday: Alastair Fitz.

That explains some things.

It’s dark in the room, not all of the power has yet been switched on, so Fitz and company walk in and out of spotlight while Fitz makes small talk about the lab and the facilities, gestures to a wall full of glass cabinets. Aida watches him with disturbing possession, and Alastair Fitz stands back and off, just a bit. The two gun-toting, grim-faced goons filter off to either side, bored but attempting, at least, to do their jobs. Ward makes a vague gesture, and the two goons drop, accompanied by sharp gunfire.

“You’re alone,” he says into the echoing room. “Your escort outside is down. Give up.”

Fitz turns to regard his fallen soldiers, aloof. “You seem to have us,” he says, calm, cool under pressure. “Show yourselves.”

Ward and Davis leave cover first, cautious. Jemma can see why; Fitz looks far too relaxed to have been caught, but his father has drawn a gun and is ready to kill. Aida is _livid_.

“Ah, the newly crowned head of Shield,” Fitz says, taking a step forward with his hands behind his back. He regards Ward. “You lot are like cockroaches, aren’t you. No matter how many times I _crush_ you--” Fitz looks off, like all of this is beneath him, but he’s obviously referring to Mace’s death, and Jemma is _so_ angry that this has been done to him. “You just won’t die.”

“No. We won’t,” Ward says. He readies his gun. “But you will.”

“Wait!” Jemma shouts, bursting out of cover. “Wait. Fitz. Look at me--”

He does look at her, brows together, mouth open to ask--

“You!” Aida steps forward, up to Fitz’ side, grabs onto his arm. At the contact, Fitz’ mouth clicks shut, he watches the floor, he looks so lost. “What are you doing here?”

“Fitz look at me, just at me,” Jemma says.

He does, closer now to his old self than he’s been except for the full breakthrough he had just before the rest of them had escaped. But it’s not him, because he doesn’t recognize her. No. He just... looks confused. His hand comes up toward his face but he doesn’t commit to the action, just floats there, hovering between the Doctor and Leopold James Fitz, someone who’s never met Jemma and can’t see how his life has become this thing.

Or she’s reading into it a whole lot. Call it hope.

“All right, you,” Alastair Fitz says, coming forward then and brandishing his weapon.

“They can’t survive this,” Aida murmurs to him, and Alastair nods, and he’s aiming and Ward and Davis are aiming.

“Wait!”

For a moment, Jemma thinks she’s said it, but it’s Fitz. Fitz standing between Aida and Alastair, with a hand out, looking for all the world like all he needs is just for everyone to stop for a moment so he can sort it out. Still not her Fitz, but it’s hope, again.

“Just wait.”

Alastair half turns to him. “What?” His low voice promises something, dangerous and dark. Behind them both, Aida looks concerned, surprised.

“Wait, I said, I just need--” He turns to his father then, beseeching. “Father, what if this is... What if--”

“What if.”

Fitz looks at Alastair with his eyes wide, he looks like a child in this moment, hopeful, fearful.

“You’ve got too much of that woman in you,” Alastair growls. “Shame she held on so long, if this is what she did to you.”

Fitz closes his eyes in some pain.

“Fitz, don’t listen to him. He’s a vile, evil man--”

“You _will_ listen to me, son,” Alastair says, gripping Fitz by the chin and making him meet his eye. “You will listen to me.”

Fitz’ hand is shaking. Although he’s confident and strong and stands taller in this world than he ever has in the real world, he seems to shrink in his father’s grasp, he catches breath where he can, he looks his father in the eye, and Jemma hears Ward’s determined exhale from the nose.

“Take the Doctor alive,” he murmurs to Davis, receives a nod. Jemma doesn’t know what’s changed Ward’s mind, but whatever it is, it’s fine with her.

“I’m not meant to be here,” Fitz breathes, shaking his head. “This isn’t right.” He tries to turn his face to Jemma, works against his father’s iron grip, but Aida puts her hand on his shoulder and he stops breathing, stops moving, his mouth opens and closes, his head tilts back, his fingers claw and he’s so silent.

“Stop!” Jemma screams. “Please!”

Aida releases him, he goes not quite boneless. Alastair Fitz catches him with a fatherly arm around his shoulders. Fitz is gone again, blinking back to cold, back to polished, though he doesn’t seem to have much strength.

“What did you do to him?” Jemma demands. She might be crying. She’s so angry she feels like she could literally will Aida into pieces.

“He’s perfectly safe,” Aida responds. “Rebooting a mind here without rebooting the world is somewhat dangerous. Please don’t make me do it again.”

Jemma thinks of real world Fitz, his erratic heartbeat and dropping blood pressure, and the timeline fits, if it took Fitz time to find Aida again, took time for her to discover that he wasn’t who he said he was -- Jemma can picture his hands shaking as Aida tested him, as he was forced to throw the switch on some poor inhuman, as he failed spectacularly, and then Aida would have done _this_ to him, to get him to _behave_. Jemma’s blood boils.

“Fitz, she is _doing_ this to you. You have to remember, just moments ago. You remembered. You _knew_ me, I know you did, please!”

Fitz glances at his father, who gives him a shaming look, and Fitz directs his gaze to the floor, brows together and jaw working in anger. “I want them _dead_ ,” Fitz commands quietly, and moves to take Aida’s arm. As she escorts him out, he throws over his shoulder, “Father.”

Alastair Fitz nods his approval and takes aim with his pistol. “We’ve got reinforcements coming. Best to put down your weapons and come peacefully.”

“We can’t let them get away, Ward,” Jemma urges.

Ward nods. “Take the Doctor, kill the rest.”

She knows they won’t be able to kill Aida, not here, not where she rules every digital bit. But a chill spikes through her when Fitz wraps his arms around Aida and spins with her, putting himself between her and Shield’s assault. Thank god Aida doesn’t seem to want him dead either; she calls out, some attempt at emotion, “Leopold, no!” and drags them both to the ground.

“Fool boy,” Alastair growls. “If you’ve harmed him--!” he shouts from cover, squeezing off shots as he can.

Ward ignores him, mutters into his comms. “Reinforcements, now. Leave two at the front doors in case anyone gets out. I want the Doctor alive.”

The addition of two more guns on their side helps. They come in on Alastair Fitz’ side and take him off guard -- pathetic, really. Fitz looks to Alastair, seething, he pulls his own gun from his jacket and swings it in a wide arc, and now Jemma can see that Fitz has been hit, dark rivulets down his white shirt that he doesn’t even seem to feel, incensed as he is with this incandescent fury.

“Don’t let them get away with this, son!” his father shouts, is silenced again with a knee to the belly.

“Father! Unhand him!”

Aida is watching. She _looks_ terrified enough. She’s edging away, but transfixed as she is by Alastair struggling in custody and Fitz waving a gun like he’s got a death wish, she doesn’t notice she’s in arm’s reach of a Shield agent.

She shrieks as she’s grabbed, as her arms are held behind her. “Leo! Leo!” she cries.

Oh but of course she noticed, and of course she strayed too close, first his father and now his “Ophelia” and now something has turned on inside Fitz. And Jemma knows this look, knows this drive. It’s what brought him across galaxies to save her, it’s what got him back when he left for Maveth with Ward.

But now it’s been turned against her.

He fires at Davis, Davis goes down. “You let her go!” he commands. “You let them both go, _now_!”

Aida struggles in an agent’s grasp, but it’s so fake now that Jemma is watching. Fitz takes a shaky step forward, into some light, and Jemma can see how pale he is now, how unsteady. Blood loss, or perhaps that “reboot” that nearly drove him to his knees. And yet he is driven on. By _love_.

He fires again, and Ward fires. Ward stumbles.

Jemma takes aim, _Aida_ stumbles, and Fitz goes down with one more shot. The Hydra reinforcements show up and Ward commands, “Get the Doctor and get out!” Someone grabs Davis from the floor where he lays. The agent holding Aida shoves her to the floor where she lies still. The agent holding Alastair Fitz knocks him cold and leaves him on the floor in favor of joining Jemma where she’s raced to Fitz’ side, his blood on her hands, on her face.

_No no no no no---_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the Doctor in their interrogation room, Ward has a idea about how to break him and discover everything he needs to know about Hydra's operations. But time is running short, as they get word that Madam Hydra may be closing in on their secret location. Jemma, meanwhile, attempts to get through to Fitz however she can.

He’s pale, but he’s alive. They don’t do much more than stitch his side and his shoulder where he’d been shot and then let him sit in a cell, handcuffed to the table.

Jemma sits with him, sits through the vitriol, the cool silence, the smug reassurance that “Ophelia” is on her way as they speak to rescue him.

“But you don’t want to be rescued by her, do you?” Jemma says.

Fitz glares at her.

“Because that’s weakness. Isn’t it?”

“She loves me.”

“She doesn’t,” Jemma says, tired. “She can’t.”

Fitz closes his eyes. The questioning, the sitting up, the lack of sleep -- it’s getting to him. She’d asked if he could at least be handcuffed to a bed in the infirmary, but Ward just laughed at her. _All the people he’s tortured? This is a picnic compared._

She takes breaks, when she comes back to see him, maybe he’s got a new split lip, or he’s gasping for breath, or he’s got his forehead in his palms, but he always sits up straight immediately again. Ready to pretend he’s fine with this, that rescue is around the corner. The way Aida is obsessed with Fitz, it likely is. There’s no time for this.

Ward comes in with her this time; Fitz is shaking minutely, staring at the table, leaning over to one side, over his gunshot wound. Sleep deprivation over two full days, but he still has the wherewithall to glare at her.

“Fitz, just give this up. Please,” she begs, sitting down in front of him.

“He can’t,” Ward says.  “Can you?”

Fitz spares him a glance but gives him nothing.

“Let me guess. Fitz men don’t show fear, or compassion. From the look of you, I’d say there’s a fair helping of _you’re just like your mother_ in there--”

Fitz flinches visibly, though he takes deep breaths to get himself back to cool. It doesn’t work.

“That’s what I thought.”

Jemma shakes her head. “What?  What are you doing?”

“Something about dear ol’ dad back there, got me thinkin’.” Ward leans in, not unkindly, but Fitz leans back, doesn’t meet his eye.  “Look, Doc.” Ward’s voice goes quiet, the sarcasm drops away. “I know what it’s like, to have someone in your life who says he wants what’s best for you, but takes away what once was good.”

Jemma watches Ward with wide eyes. She almost misses when Fitz looks up to meet his stare.

“I know what it’s like to lose yourself somewhere, especially as a kid. This life feels wrong to you, because it _isn’t_ you.”

Fitz lowers his brows, fixes his face into a snarl. “I know who I am.”

“So do I,” Ward says, and his voice is so gentle Jemma is reminded of a time before everything had gone so to shit. “You’re who your father made you.”

Fitz shakes his head, averts his eyes.

“You’re what he shaped. With his words? With a belt? It doesn’t matter--”

Fitz squeezes his eyes shut, fists his shaking hands on the table, pulls against the cuffs just enough to know they’re there. “Stop it--”

“You can’t keep this up forever. You don’t have to.”

“I know who I am--”

“This feels wrong to you--”

“I _know who I am_ \--!”

“You’re a murderer! You’re a monster!”

“I’m doing what I have to--!”

Ward grabs Fitz by the chin, forces him to look up into Ward’s face  “You do what I tell you to do!” Ward screams, and Fitz stares. Something switches in him. Maybe the strain of the gunshot wounds and the sleep deprivation and the lack of food and the uncomfortable accommodations and the constant full light at all hours and the fact that they don’t give him a regular schedule and all the other classic methods of torture, _plus_ this strategic stab into a vulnerable spot Jemma had completely missed in the tableau of this Fitz not being _her_ Fitz--

Fitz shakes in Ward’s grasp, blinks and tears come down his face, fill his eyes and come down again. “Ward,” he breathes in abject terror, and _this_ is her Fitz and if he’s remembering all of his old memories at once--

“Get away from him, now!” she demands, and physically shoves Ward away. Ward lets Fitz go and Fitz immediately pulls away, as far away as he can get from Ward who’s now fading into the back of the cell. Jemma tries to pull Fitz back from this panic attack.

“Jemma,” Fitz says, blinking and big-eyed. His compulsion, his need to remain upright and calm and cool and aloof is gone with the integrity of his horrible framework persona, and there’s nothing now to stop him from signaling how much he hurts, how exhausted, how hungry, now miserable, but still there’s nothing but fear.

“Shh, I’m here. Calm down. We’re going to get out.”

“F-framework,” he says, nodding, swallowing, getting his feet under him, metaphorically. Literally? She doubts he can even stand.

“That’s right. Everyone else is out, and now it’s your turn.”

Fitz closes his eyes, lists to the side, away from her away from Ward, shrinks in on himself. “What’ve I done?” he breathes. “What’ve I done?”

“Nothing you weren’t programmed to do. Fitz, that wasn’t you. Please--” She takes him by the jawline with both hands, comforting, thumbs light on each cheek, gently urging him to look at her, but his face when he does is a confused jumble of supplication and fear, the wide eyes she saw on him seeking guidance from his father, and she pulls away immediately. This is not as easy as she had hoped it would be. “Please, we have to get out of here, and then we’ll clear everything up, I promise.”

“Everyone’s...?”

“They’re out. They’re safe.” She doesn’t mention Mace, but she can see him remember it a moment later, and then he says:

“Not everyone.”

“We don’t have much time, Fitz.”

“She’s right,” Ward says, stepping away from the wall again. “We’ve got intelligence that indicates Madam Hydra isn’t far from discovering the base.”

Fitz looks up at Ward, his pasts, real and programmed, fighting over his face, fear and fury, trauma and cool condemnation. But somewhere in the soup, Fitz is brave above all, and he can face Ward. “You’re not wrong,” he says, head turned slightly, watching what Ward will do.

“I want to know everything you know about Hydra’s operation. Right now.” Ward drops a pad of paper and a pen on the table. Fitz frowns at it, left hand up to his right shoulder, where he’d been shot and, reaches for the pen with a grimace.

“No,” Jemma spits, looking at Ward incredulously. “Don’t you see now? This isn’t the Fitz you know, is it?”

Ward opens his mouth, but she cuts him off.

“This must _finally_ prove to you that I’m not wrong about this world. You and everything in it are fake, based on _our_ memories--” She indicates Fitz, Fitz doesn’t look up from where he has gone still.

Ward regards Fitz, expression unreadable. Then: “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“What?”

“She told me I... hurt some people. In the so-called real world. She meant you.”

Fitz swallows. “Not just me.”

“But mostly you. _She_ ,” he says, nodding at Jemma, “mostly meant you.”

Jemma’s heart races. Whatever Ward’s getting at -- she can’t stand how her love for Fitz has been turned into an interrogation weapon against him. Of _course_ she meant everyone Ward had harmed or killed, but of _course_ when he’d asked, she’d been thinking of Fitz. Fitz’ head is bowed but he watches Ward from the corner of his eye, breathing hard. His left hand is shaking; he curls it into a fist to stop it. Doesn’t answer.

“What did I do to you?”

“You betrayed us--”

“What did I do to _you_?”

Fitz looks up at Jemma, back to the table. “I trusted you. You were my brother and you tried to take everything from me.”

“Details,” Ward says, like it’s an emergency, like he _needs_ to know something concrete.

“You and me...” He looks up at Ward, mouth open. His voice shakes: “We were family, family neither of us had much of. And you betrayed me, _us._ And you looked at me and told me you were trying to save me when you drowned me in the ocean.”

“And that’s just the beginning,” Jemma says, putting a stop to a list she’s certain Fitz won’t be able to continue without a complete breakdown, in his current state. “Is that what you wanted? A list of your sins in a world you never knew and will never know? We don’t have time for that. I am glad that you seem to be a good man here, in this world. And maybe you are programmed to never be able to understand what I’m trying to convince you of, but trust those good man instincts, if you can, and the evidence in front of your nose -- _this_ Fitz isn’t the Doctor you know, and he’s in danger, and you’re in danger, and I am the best chance any of us has right now.”

Ward is still watching Fitz, watching Fitz’ bowed head, tight shoulders, and after a moment, he comes forward with the key to the cuffs. Jemma goes to Fitz as soon as he’s unshackled, and she has to fight the urge to bustle him into a bed, to check his stitches, to wrap her hands around his face and find his eyes with hers and confirm to herself and to him that all will be well, so long as they’re _together_ , but they don’t have time for anything more than a longish time spent with her arms wrapped around him, his face smooshed into her neck. “I’m so glad you’re back,” she murmurs, pulls away. “Now we’ve work to do.”

* * *

 

“But if she’s, if _Aida_ \--” The name seems to physically hurt him to say. “--  is in charge of this place, how does she not already know where this place is?”

“I’m not sure, and I’m not going to wait around to ask her.”

“Okay,” Fitz says, putting the last touches on their escape button. “Found some fractured code I could re-purpose. It’s all set up to let us out.”

“Where?”

“Right here in the base, actually.”

Jemma frowns. “That’s convenient.”

Fitz matches her. “Too. But it’s what we’ve got. I’ve checked it over and over, it should work. I don’t think it’s a trap.”

“We’ve got company,” Ward says, swinging into the room briefly, just as klaxons blare from the hallways. He’s lit in red and he looks at them seriously. “If all of this is fake, just be merciful and kill it before anyone else gets hurt. Okay?” He nods at two soldiers in the hallway, who come in to take up positions on Jemma and Fitz’ six, an escort.

Jemma stares a moment, nods. “Promise.” She takes Fitz by the hand and pulls him to his feet, conscious of his injuries and unlike with everyone else in this hell, unable to tell herself that his pain doesn’t matter here because it isn’t real. They race through the halls with Fitz leading the way and she watches the flurry of the few resistance soldiers left as they suit up for battle, some nursing recent injury, and she wonders as they pass each other, whether this world isn’t just a little real, if someone is there to feel the pain of it.

Fitz stops them at a door, the door to Vault D. He closes his eyes, some brief flash of another painful memory, once clouded with time and distance but now close to the surface and raw, but he pushes the door open and leads them down the stairs.

He’s at the bottom of the stairs when the lights come on, shrieks just as the room is bathed in mid-century yellow light and there’s an arm around his neck and he’s been spun to face Jemma and their two escorts, who turn their guns on each other, inexplicably, and fire.

“I can’t control you, Jemma Simmons.” Aida looks almost human, imploring. “Please go and leave us in peace.”

Jemma makes her way down the stairs cautiously, eyes on Aida, on Fitz. “Please let him go.”

“Leo is mine.”

Fitz struggles in her grasp, she lets him go only a moment, only to give herself space to lay her hand on his shoulder, and Fitz’ hands curl up in agony, his mouth opens with a high whine, head thrown back. When Aida pulls her hand away, Fitz is gone again. Gone, _again_ , replaced _again_ with this imposter. He looks up at Jemma, Jemma’s heart drops. How much time can they have, to escape this time, to get Fitz back to himself again, how long before this kills him?

“He’s not. And he’s not _this_ , this thing you’ve made him.”

“He is happy here. He’s safer with me. Here, he can be just as passionate and creative and amazing as he was in the other world, and just as devoted to someone he loves. But _I_ will never allow him to come to harm. _I_ will never force him to sacrifice himself for me. He’ll be able to feel that fire, that willingness to destroy himself for me, but he will _never_ have to act on it. Isn’t that better?”

Jemma winds her fists up at her sides. “You’re keeping him as a pet.”

“No, I’m giving him an opportunity. To really live. Just as he’s given me the opportunity, to be _alive_.”

Jemma scoffs, tears in her eyes. “You’re not alive. You’re a rogue program designed by a horrible little man with too much power.”

“Dr Radcliffe has made it possible for you to stand where you are, for Leo to have found the stray piece of code that has brought you so close to escape. He’s been hiding this base from me. Do you still believe all of this is as simple as you say it is?”

Jemma frowns. “Radcliffe--”

“Dr Radcliffe wanted only the best, wanted to give others, like Agnes, a chance at a full life. And that’s what I want. What Leo has given me. Jemma Simmons, I _am_ alive. Here, I can feel. Dr Radcliffe, for all of his intentions, treated me like a _thing._ Leo was the only one who ever treated me with any kind of dignity, any amount of kindness. So leave him here with me, and I’ll let you go back to the other world.”

Jemma scowls. “You’re not special. Fitz treats _everyone_ with kindness. And look at what you’ve made him into. He’s coming back with me, where he is loved, where he can be kind again, where he can treat others with dignity again. You’ve taken that from him, and I intend to give it back.”

Aida sighs, her cool exterior droops as she lowers her chin and crosses her arms. “As I said, rebooting a mind without rebooting the world is... dangerous.”

She places her hand on Fitz’ shoulder again, and he drops to his knees, mouth open, eyes closed, in silent agony. “In the other world,” Aida says, “his heart rate is skyrocketing. He won’t last long.”

“Why are you doing this? You’ll lose him too!”

Aida removes her hand, Fitz falls to his hands and knees, gasping. “I have a copy of his original brain. It’ll set me back, but I can recreate him. Can you?”

Jemma stares. “What if... what if we make a deal? Give him back to me, and I promise we’ll leave the framework up, and you can recreate him here for yourself.”

Aida tilts her head. “I have learned a lot from watching you humans. Enough to know that you’re lying.” She touches Fitz again, and he curls in on himself on his knees, hands pressed to his chest.

A moment later, she lets him go again. Fitz looks up at Jemma. Cold again, but dazed, angry. “Madam,” he growls, murder in his face, his lowered brow.

“Leave now,” Aida warns, her fingertips hovering over Fitz’ shoulder. “Or he’ll die--”

“No, please, please!”

Fitz heaves himself up to his knees, target locked on Jemma. Her heart races as he reaches up into the folds of Aida’s capelet, comes back out with a pistol. Aida’s mouth curves up in a small smile, victorious. There’s a shot, and the smile fades. Her mouth drops open. Fitz relaxes backward onto his heels. He’s still staring at Jemma as his hand with the gun drops heavily to the ground.

“I’m no one’s _pet_ ,” he says, as Aida falls to the ground, and he falls to the ground, and Jemma races toward him. She collapses at his side, fussing finally, his bleeding shoulder and torn stitches in his side, blood on her hands far too familiar and she pats him back to consciousness, freezing when she feels the press of a pistol to her stomach.

“You’re a dead woman,” he gasps.

“Oh Fitz, please,” she sobs.

“How... how are you... here? You’re a dead woman...”

“I’ve come to rescue you. I’m rescuing you.”

“She betrayed me. And I didn’t even know it. Did I?” Not her Fitz, but betrayed again, by someone he desperately loved.

“Yes. Yes. I’m so sorry. But I have come to take you away from this. Will you come?”

He looks like he might refuse, but a glance at Aida’s body and he’s nodding at her, throws the gun aside and reaches for her help, and together they’re up and heading for the console in the center of the room, the controls for the vault, a press of the button, a final last look at each other--

And they’re out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

 

When he wakes, he wakes stuttering breath and heavy eyelids and someone patting his face. How dare a pat on his face, how dare a small hand pat his face like that, insistent when he can’t even  _ breathe-- _

“ _ Fitz _ ,” she says and he gasps awake then, phantom pain in his head and his heart; he remembers Ophelia touching him and the agony that folded him up on the ground. He remembers shooting her in the belly and falling away only to be dragged up again by this desperate but somehow exasperated girl. This girl calling over and over  _ Fitz _ . Simmons.  _ Jemma _ .

He wrenches his eyes open, Doctor and Fitz, and he reaches out with a flare of pain, pushes her aside, he steps forward and his knees buckle, and they’re on either side of him. Not Jemma, two other women he knows but doesn’t know. Skye, but not Skye, and ... Elena Rodriquez.

Elena. Yo-Yo.  _ Mack _ . Daisy, Mace--

He shoves away from them both, boneless as he is, stumbles on his own a couple of feet and when he’s on his hands and knees, twists away further to vomit onto the ground, aching where he knows he’s been shot, but also hasn’t been shot, aching where he knows he’s a monster but somehow is not a monster.

“What’ve I done, what’ve I done,” he gasps. Jemma comes around in front of him, heedless of the mess, takes his face in her hands.

“Fitz. Please, please. Speak to me. Let me know you’re alright.”

He blinks at her a moment, he’s still sucking in air, still murmuring but she looks so concerned that he stops. Everything. One long breath, one moment of silence to get his brain under him, then: “I’m not alright. How could I be alright? I’m - I’m--”

She gathers him into her arms then, shushing and smiling, some nonsense words that mean  _ if that’s your answer, you’ll be alright _ .  How hideous that  _ this _ is how she trusts that he’s well, this mindless emotion, this unsteady rush, whimpering into the bosom of some woman--

Fitz pushes back from her. “Do-don’t touch me. You don’t know what I...” He looks up at her, into her hopeful face. “Maybe I’m not me,” he says, whispers really, to himself. A panic. 

“You’re you. I promise.”

He looks past her then. “Everyone else--”

“They’re out,” Daisy says. She goes on, something about taking back the base while Jemma went back in for him. Something about cleaning up, something about Aida’s body--

“Okay okay,” Fitz says, hand to his head. He’s still on the ground. He’s not sure he can stand. But he doesn’t want to hear anymore, not about the others, not about Aida. They’re out and safe and she’s... not here and that’s all he can spare. He puts his hands down to lever himself up.

“You shouldn’t move yet, Fitz,” Jemma fusses, and god he wants her to fuss, he wants this attention to prove to him that she isn’t repulsed by him even if he can’t imagine she still loves him. She’s smiling at him, something watery and weak but he knows her smiles and this one is genuine and grateful and hopeful and concerned, so he thinks that with maybe a few hundred years of therapy they may still be friends.

But he’s got to get up. He’s got to do  _ something _ . He can’t stay here, he can’t watch Daisy watching him, he can’t look at Elena and not see Mack, he can’t --  _ can’t _ \-- keep letting Jemma touch him. He holds a hand up to Jemma’s increased fussing when he moves again, she quiets and just watches him as he gets to his feet slowly. He weighs a thousand pounds out here, he’s not going to make it out into the hall until he does, he’s not going to make it into the next room until he does and there he collapses.

No one’s followed him. Their soft voices tell him they know where he’s gone and why he’s gone and they seem content to talk amongst themselves for a bit, then they too fall silent, and Fitz is left alone with himself.

He’s propped up against a wall. His body doesn’t feel like his. Doesn’t have the scars he’s used to. And it feels too much.  _ He _ feels too much. His grey and white matter -- his neural network is different here and it feels wrong. There’s another thousand years of therapy.

But it doesn’t really matter in the end. There’s no way his life goes on the way it did before. The things he’s done -- he remembers it all, the red on his hands, the screaming. The pleading, the look on his father’s face--

When they find him again, Jemma wakes him with her cold hands once more. He wasn’t really asleep, lost in memory, reliving, not just tortures, but all of his decisions from the first time he begged his father to stay. When he opens his eyes, he sees her but doesn’t, she says his name twice more before he nods, and behind her stand Daisy and Elena in the doorway, looking apprehensive.

“Our ride is here. It’s time to go.”

He is and isn’t looking forward to seeing someone. It won’t be May -- there’s no way she’s out of medical, although it occurs to him now that he has no idea what time it is. Coulson might have come himself, but likely not, with Mace gone--

Fitz shakes his head, refuses Jemma’s hand. Slowly, he pulls himself up using the wall he’s sat against.  “Go go, I’m right behind you,” he murmurs, and Daisy and Elena turn to go. Jemma of course stays with him, exempted, she believes, from his request.

They limp along behind Daisy and Elena to the extraction point. He helps Jemma with her injured leg, she helps him not slump into walls every five steps. “Aren’t we a pair?” she murmurs with a slightly manic laugh.

_ Aren’t we just _ , he thinks, but he can’t speak. His memories are crowding, overwhelming.

“You’re supposed to say ‘Aren’t we just,’” Jemma says then, small smile, inquiring, testing.

He looks at her. Suddenly she looks as though she’s laughing at him. She knows something he doesn’t, she knows his  _ thoughts _ , there’s no protocol for- there’s no way he can allow--

“Fitz?” Jemma stops them, takes his face in her hands again.

He feels sped up, frightened, about to step backward off a tall cliff. He shakes his head. Is it Fitz? Is he?

“Fitz,” Jemma says again, so sad her voice. “Fitz, are you with me? Can you hear me?”

He blinks, nods. “Y-yeah. I... I’m here. I just...” He trails off, uncertain. She takes his arm again and gets them moving, watching him askance for more signs of strangeness.

In the end, no one comes, no one he knows. A junior agent who doesn’t speak to them but gives Jemma a nod and then goes to talk with Daisy and Elena.

No one came.

Fitz allows Jemma strap him into a seat. And why would they come? He murdered one of them. He made this all possible. And beyond all of that -- now they know who he is. Deep down, what he’s capable of.

Jemma straps in next to him.

“Unless you’d like me to sit somewhere else,” she murmurs as she clicks the buckler together.

He shakes his head, he thinks. He can’t look at her. “No,” he says. His voice is a breath but she hears him somehow. If he can keep this for a while longer, he will.

“I’m sure they’re all just... very busy. There was some trouble at the base, getting out of it.”

Fitz looks at her then, concern overriding his marrow-borne shame, her face first but remembering her limp, he looks down at her trousers stained red over a wound she’s half hiding with her hand. He looks back up with a question he can’t put a voice to. He may never speak again, but with Jemma, maybe he doesn’t have to.

“I’m all right,” she says, answering him. “The base was attacked. By Radcliffe’s LMDs.”

_ Racliffe’s _ LMDs, she was careful to say. He looks back into his own lap, but he can feel her staring, discerning, measuring. Weighing. 

“LMDs,” he repeats softly.

“Of you. You and Mack and Coulson and Director Mace. We discovered them and realized you’d all been kidnapped, but there was  _ quite  _ a little fight getting out.”

She’s playful at the end, always downplaying these kinds of things she is. He thinks fondly of  _ I shot a superior officer in the chest _ . But she’s sparing him details, he knows that. He wonders if she had to fight him, if he’s the one who harmed her, and he thinks  _ Of course I was _ . He reaches a hand toward her leg, blood red and stiff fabric, but her hand is still there covering it from full view -- a blessing, something he doesn’t deserve -- and he stops an inch short of touching her. His hand has moved of its own accord, he’s only noticed after the fact, and he wonders--

Was that the Doctor? Or was that Fitz? The one she loves, or the one who loathes her?

A moment later, she’s taken his hand, she’s holding it firm.

“You’re shaking,” she says. 

Yes, he is.

“You haven’t stopped shaking since you woke up.”

No, he hasn’t.

But now that she’s saying something about it, his breath shudders in his chest, he can’t control that and he can’t control the sense that he’s falling backward away from something or that he’s very cold or that his thoughts aren’t his and are clipping along at way too quick a pace for him to catch onto--

“Fitz.” Her grasp on his hand tightens, almost painful. “Fitz look at me. Calm down.”

He shakes his head, looks at her, eyes wide with pricking autonomic tears, he can’t breathe, can’t calm down--

“I’m not, I’m not--” he says, or thinks he says.

“Shh, shh.”

He has no problem shushing, he can barely speak in the first place. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine how he’ll face Mack, Coulson. May--

“Agent May,” he breathes.

“She’s fine. She’s up and about, no real harm done.”

He nods, keeps his eyes closed. The movement of the plane doesn’t help how sick he feels, how off balance, ungrounded.

It’s a long ride back to the base. He fills the time rehearsing words he cannot say to people he cannot face and doesn’t deserve forgiveness or pity from. Jemma sits with him, holds his hand tight, murmurs to him:  _ everything will be all right, you’ll see. Whatever happens, we’re together. If we have to leave Shield, so be it.  _

Leave Shield. Fitz clings to those words, an escape he doesn’t want. He doesn’t want to leave Shield, it’s his home, it’s what he’s known since he was sixteen and groping his way through the Academy, the youngest of his peers until he met Jemma. He remembers the competition, the late nights. The other lads jeering at him in the corridors, the cut of those words, the disappointment on his father’s face, the rough long nights spent learning to let it all roll off his shoulders, standing barefoot in the cold rain in the courtyard, his back stinging agony under his thin white shirt--

_ No no no that’s not right-- _

“I’m not me,” he murmurs. “I’m not me,” over and over until they land. If Jemma hears him, she says nothing.

* * *

The base looks a mess. He is sorely needed to repair much of the avionics bay, to oversee it at least. It’s strangely comforting, seeing it utterly demolished but in the process of repair -- something  _ did _ happen, he feels wrong and that’s okay because obviously something real did happen, and they’re  _ fixing  _ it, life goes on, the world hasn’t ended.

But they get in, she guides him where he needs to go; med bay first. For them both.

Jemma won’t allow herself to be separated from him, not because he’s asked her to stay, but because, he thinks, she can’t let him out of her sight just yet. He’s grateful and that feels selfish; she needs to leave him, detach, cleanse herself from him.

But instead, he sits still while they take his vitals and run an IV and beside him, they’ve cut her trousers up the side to halfway up her thigh, and she hisses and catches breath as they clean the wound.

He feels none of it, he answers no questions. Someone takes his temperature, Jemma gets more involved in his care than in allowing them to care for her. And that’s not right.

“Agent Fitz,” someone says. The bed they are both sitting on feels like it’s falling away behind him, a treacherous precipice. 

“How long has he been unresponsive?”

“He’s not unresponsive,” Jemma says. She squeezes his hand, he can’t help but turn his head to look at her.  She smiles. “See?”

He looks now at the med tech tending him, down at the IV in his arm, wonders what’s in it, what could possibly be in that IV, nothing is wrong with him, so why would he need--

“Fitz, look at me,” Jemma says. He does. Someone very far away is calling for a blanket. “Leave him be,” Jemma says and he doesn’t think she’s talking to him. “I’ve got it.” Her hand is on his hand; she pulls his questing fingers away from the IV port in his arm. “I’ve got you.”

“I can’t,” he whispers. He searches her face. 

“Fitz?”

The med tech has gone for a moment and they’re somewhat alone. Fitz memorizes her freckles,  _ re _ memorizes them, shakes his head, looks down at her bloody leg. Reaches again for his IV and pulls it as she lurches forward to stop him.

“Don’t do that!” she admonishes, but she can’t lean farther over because of her injuries, and he slides down from the bed.

Looks at her wide-eyed, hands shaking, head shaking. “I need to...” he starts, can’t finish.

“Fitz, please.”

“-- _ Go _ , I need to go.”

“Fitz, you’re shaking.”

“I’m  _ fine _ , you’re the one bleeding. And I need to--”

He flees, leaves her sitting helpless. After everything she’s done to save him, he leaves her sitting now when she can’t easily follow, with her wound abraded and awaiting stitches, and no one would let her get five feet anyway, but somehow they all avoid him as he slips out of the busy med bay and into a corridor.

It occurs to him now, that he could run into one of them, one of the people he considers  _ family  _ who now must hate him. He’s got to apologize, he’s got to somehow make it right, but that task is so overwhelming that just thinking the phrase  _ I’m so sorry _ blanks him out completely and he wakes up moments later hanging onto the wall for dear life, gasping, heart racing. It’s not just overwhelming; it’s impossible for an apology to encompass his wrongs. It’s impossible for him to do something that could salve this for anyone. He could devote his life to never crossing another person, never speaking out of turn, never raising his voice, never getting angry or frustrated or picking up a screwdriver and it would never be enough--

He finds himself in the gym.  _ Daisy _ . There’s just one person in the gym, taking out some frustration on the heavy bag. Fitz murmurs “A-Agent Johnson?” and the guy looks over, licks his lips, says she left as soon as the Zephyr landed, and then makes a quick excuse to leave.

Fitz hugs his arms around his waist. Nods. News has traveled. He’ll be lucky if there’s an agent in the base who doesn’t scatter at the sight of him. That settles it, what Jemma had said on the plane: he’ll leave Shield. Jemma shouldn’t, she should stay, and that’ll be a fight he’s willing to lose. She can make her own decisions. And he will argue as gently as possible that she should pick up her life without him, but in the end, he cannot make her decisions for her, for anyone, and that will have to be step one in a million step plan to redemption, or at least an attempt.

He’s going to write his mum a letter. He’s going to go see her for a couple of weeks, and then? Work on making things right? Disappear? Whatever they want from him, really. And as he finds that Mack  _ was _ working in the garage up until the Zephyr landed and then he made himself scarce as well, it hits him -- they don’t want him here.

He asks around. Even May has disappeared since they landed. None of them, not even Daisy or Elena, are around now that he has come back. Only Coulson remains, and that makes sense, he’ll be taking over for -- for -- it makes sense Coulson’s still around. The decision is made easier now, of course. He’ll disappear into obscurity. He’s already designing his own tag-and-release protocol -- he’ll go somewhere far away, no contact with the kind of resources he’d need to build anything more advanced than a toaster, send in his monthly status reports, voluntarily check in with whoever they send to shadow him. Whoever has that sorry job, he’ll buy them lunch, try to make their life bearable. 

It almost feels like relief.

He finds Jemma in their room, standing stock still, tears streaming down her face. When she hears him come in, she wipes her cheeks and he can  _ see _ her put away her misery for his sake. That’s not right, or fair. Maybe he should try to win the coming argument after all; she can’t keep holding him above water, not like this, not when she’s bleeding out herself.

Their room is empty. Pictures gone from the dresser and the walls, drawers empty. One duffle bag sits in the middle of the bed. 

He’d hoped he would have been allowed to actually make the choice, but it seems he doesn’t rate that. Well, that’s true. “That’s that, then,” he says.

“I suppose it is.”

“Did they move you to a single?”

“I made it pretty clear,” she says, spine full of steel, chin raised, “that if they wanted you out, I was coming with you.”

Fitz comes fully into the room then, shaking his head. “Jemma, no. You need to stay. This is your home, I can’t--”

“You’re my home,” Jemma says, voice breaking. The tears she’d stifled made another appearance, but didn’t fall. Her brows lower and he knows this look. He’s going to lose this battle after all.

“How can you even look at me-?” he tries anyway.

“Fitz, I am not leaving you. I’ve got  _ way _ too much time invested--”

“A joke. Now?”

She smiles just a bit, he smiles, just a bit.

“Should I even try to dissuade you?” he says.

“No, you shouldn’t. You’ll lose, and I’m very tired.”

“That’s fair.” He comes to her, takes her hand in his. “But Jemma. I’m not-- You should feel free to-- at any time--”

“Shut up.”

It’s humorless but there’s no sting either. She’s tired and she holds his hand as they stare at their empty room, the stripped bed with clean linens folded at the foot, ready for some other pair of lovers to come and claim it.

Jemma’s phone rings. Fitz can hear Coulson’s voice loud and clear through the tinny speaker.

_ “A car is waiting.” _

“Thank you, sir,” Jemma says softly, and Fitz reaches for the duffel.

* * *

Davis drives them. Black SUV, he makes a little conversation, he can’t look Fitz in the eye. Sitting in back with a driver feels too familiar, or maybe it’s just his bearing about it now. After all, he’s always been in the back seat; when they drive somewhere it’s always a field operative driving or a combat-ready agent whose job it is to drive, not the scientists who are usually still putting finishing touches on a gadget or just nervously hoping not to die this time out--

This time feels different. He’s got a whole life of memories now where he’s being driven because he’s the boss, he’s the one they are afraid of, they whisper his name, they try not to be seen by him.

He catches his reflection in the window, chin up and shoulders back -- the bearing of an emperor. It takes him off-guard, he turns away sharply which alerts Jemma, who takes his hand and peers at him in concern.

He shakes his head, holds up his other hand to say  _ wait, please _ and closes his eyes. How can he even explain this to her? Of course she’d understand him, the technical aspects of what he was sorting through, but the experience--

Anyway, isn’t he trying to minimize her worrying about him?

He smiles at her a smile he knows doesn’t quite reach, she smiles a smile back and squeezes his shaking hand. Her touch is cool and comforting, soothes his jumping ansty fingers and he doesn’t deserve whatever she’s spending on him, but he can’t pull his hand away either, because she needs it even more than he does. So he’ll suffer this cool comfort, suffer the guilt, and give it to her.

He’s lost again when the car stops; he’s been staring at the back of the seat in front of him, staring at the convulsing bodies of inhumans, at their limp limbs and lifeless bodies, slack mouths once screaming themselves red for release. So he gave them release. He’s been staring into the face of his father, wants nothing more than to look away, look down in shame, but he can’t even acknowledge the truth of his father’s disappointment by feeling ashamed,  _ that’s _ disappointment  _ too _ and there’s no way to win--

“Fitz,” Jemma says softly. When he doesn’t answer -- he’s heard her but he can’t pull out of this other life so quickly as that -- when he doesn’t answer, she touches his face and he pulls away from her so hard he knocks his skull against the window.

“Oh, Fitz!” she says as he turns to see where they are.

“Everybody out!” Davis says. He gets out and heads around to the back of the SUV.

“This is- isn’t the airport,” Fitz mumbles. 

“No, it is not,” Jemma says.

He turns to look at her, because she sounds different, sounds... off. But she’s opening the car door and she’s gone, so he fumbles at his own and hoists the duffel strap onto his shoulder. Before them is a building. It appears to be their destination.

“Don’t even get to pick our own exile,” he mutters, tired. He had hoped, maybe home for a bit, maybe find somewhere very far away in the middle of nowhere. But they’re  _ here _ . They’re barely ten minutes from the base. He glances at Jemma to see what she thinks of it, and she’s got this little smile. Maybe... maybe they want to be able to pick Jemma’s brain at a moment’s notice. 

“I don’t think it will be so bad,” Jemma says.

“Not that bad,” he says, wrinkling his nose in doubt. But though her tiny smile is bright, she’s got bruises on her face still and she’s still walking with a limp, dressed in the plain black leggings she probably got from her locker after medical. He drops his gaze to the ground, chastised, and she walks him into the building, Davis following behind them with a box he’s retrieved from the back of the SUV.

Jemma somehow knows where they’re going. Her steps have gotten a bit lighter. She rummages in her bag, pulls out a key. Fitz frowns in suspicion -- she knew where they were going? She didn’t tell him? She knows something he doesn’t. His hand shakes with this information, he can’t-- it isn’t permitted, he  _ can’t _ permit--

The key fits into a lock, the knob turns, the door swings open. There’s conversation coming from inside. He comes with her mostly out of shock and as they come in, the conversation quiets. Through the living room, he can see into the kitchen, where all of his friends sit drinking beers. They turn en masse toward the door, time slows, Fitz is slow, everything about him but his rabbit heart and gasping breath.

Mack holds out a bottle, solemn-eyed.

Fitz blinks around at the books on bookshelves -- theirs -- and throw pillows on the couch from their bed, and realizes with horror that they’ve just moved them into this apartment, and Jemma is smiling, she had the key to this place in her bag, so--

Fitz backs up, shaking his head, right into Davis who’s bringing up the rear.

“Whoa, hey, watch out. Box of cupcakes here.”

“Cupcakes, Davis? Really?” Daisy calls from her seat at the kitchen bar, but she springs up to escort the cupcakes all the same. 

Davis looks embarrassed, but he brushes past Fitz and heads for the breakfast nook to set the cupcakes down and get himself a beer. “We deserve cupcakes. Right?”

“We so do,” Elena says, tapping Mack on the chest. Mack rolls his eyes long-sufferingly but smiles at her, leaves his seat to snag a couple of the cupcakes before they’re gone.

Elena, Mack, Daisy, May, Davis, Prince, Piper--

Fitz shakes his head slowly, staring, breathing.

“Fitz, it’s our--”

“--Our place, our...” He licks his lips. Jemma looks concerned now, smile gone. He looks at the others, they’ve gone silent now, wondering what he will do.

“S...” he breathes. “Sorry, I -- I can’t do this. Sorry. I’m so-- Sorry.”

He flees.


End file.
